I. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to sorting unaddressed items. More particularly, the present invention relates to sorting unaddressed items based on delivery point address data.
II. Background Information
The United States Postal Service (USPS) is an independent government agency that provides mail delivery and other services to the public. The USPS is widely recognized as a safe and reliable means for sending and receiving mail and other items. With the advent and steady growth of electronic mail and electronic commerce, item delivery systems will increasingly be utilized for sending and receiving packages and other items. In the context of item delivery, a delivery system operator may desire, for example, to sort unaddressed items.
When items corresponding to a particular delivery route are to be delivered, a manual casing process may be used by a delivery system operator. In the casing process, addressed items to be delivered may be placed in a case in a sequence corresponding to delivery points along the route. For example, the items corresponding to a first delivery point in the route may be placed in the front of the case. Then, items corresponding to a second delivery point may be placed in the case next. This process may continue until all the items are place in the case according to the route's delivery point sequence. Any particular item's delivery point may be indicated by a delivery address on the item.
When delivering unaddressed items using the above casing process, one solution is to associate two physical pieces, a detached address label (DAL) that contains specific delivery point information (such as an address), and a separate unaddressed piece that comprises the unaddressed item itself. To effect delivery of the unaddressed item, the DAL may be inserted into the case in order to establish the delivery sequence for the corresponding unaddressed item. When the case is taken out along the delivery route for delivery, the DAL serves as a visual cue to an operator delivering the items in the case that an unaddressed item is to be delivered at this point on the route. When the DAL is encountered by the operator delivering the items in the case, the operator may, for example, take an unaddressed item from a separate bundle and deliver it to the delivery point.
Great inefficiencies are created in this procedure because, for example, the aforementioned processes can be very costly and time consuming. Accordingly, efficiently sorting unaddressed items remains an elusive goal. Thus, there remains a need to efficiently sort unaddressed items. In addition, there remains a need to efficiently sort unaddressed items based on the delivery point address data.